Saturday 18th January 2014

4073

A UKIP counsellor has claimed that recent slightly adverse weather conditions in the UK are down to God's anger at David Cameron allowing equal marriage. If they are then God not only moves in a mysterious way, but likes to send his messages to us via cryptic crossword clues. Two seemingly unconnected events are linked and it's up to us to work out what God's motivation was. Rather than just attacking all gay weddings with lightning, he sends floods to a few places, none of which are particularly associated with gay people getting married, mildly punishing people who agree or disagree with the policy. Given the extremes of weather that God has up his sleeve, some quite nasty storms and a bit of flooding (unpleasant and dangerous as it is to be caught up in) does come quite low on the scale. He has volcanoes, earthquakes and asteroids at this command. Even if the storms were due to gay marriage (and I am still struggling to see the link that God is making there) then at best God is only mildly irked by them. Like He has better things to be getting properly furious about than two people finding love and wanting to make a life together. He's not got any kind of problem with any of His priests having sex with children or with people claiming to be Christian and then failing to celebrate love, judging people or refusing to forgive supposed transgressions. He doesn't even particularly mind all the gay people having sex with each other. It's when two gay people make a commitment, that's what really fucks off God. What an unusual and confused deity He is. If I don't like something that is going on I try to talk it out, btu God goes all petulant and furious and then smashes up something that isn't even anything to do with what he's angry about. If He was a human being then I think he'd be hospitalised until He'd calmed down a bit. And maybe someone would try an talk Him through His issues and try to pinpoint where this bizarre homophobia had come from. Personally I would be embarrassed to worship someone with a worse sense of logic and justice than the average five-year-old child.

I think it's a bit arrogant to try and guess what God might even be mildly annoyed by, it's like saying you think you are able to read His mind, which I would say is some kind of blasphemy. But isn't it just as likely that God has sent these storms as a punishment for all the people who voted in UKIP counsellors? If we're going to have a guess at His motivation I'd say that that was a good a bet as any. I hope you will heed His warning. It's just some floods this time, but for every vote that UKIP get from now on the weather dial gets turned up one notch. I am pretty certain global warming is only happening because God can't believe how stupid people are when they get to the ballot box. He's warning us, but we're not heeding the warning.

I am so glad that God has exactly the same political and moral viewpoints as I do.

This afternoon I did a photoshoot with a photographer called Matt Crockett, who is part way through his 50 Comics project (he's going to take picture of 50 comedians - I think I might have been number 15). And through the wonder of modern technology his chosen shot was ready within hours. Earlier I had taken a photo myself. As I left the gym in Hammersmith I noticed that someone had created a small work of art in the flower bed by the pavement. A broken plate had been arranged in a little display. I have a vague memory of writing about something else being placed in this border a few years ago, but don't remember what it was. But some Hammersmith artist is trying to spread a tiny amount of joy in the world and make us consider the nature of art as we go about our daily lives.

Tonight I recorded another couple of episodes of Just A Minute with Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Sheila Hancock and of course Nicholas Parsons. Now ninety years old, Parsons is a wonder. He was not very well today, but battled through an unpleasant cough and a gammy leg, remaining upbeat, amusing and on top of this tricksy game. By my reckoning the five of us have a combined age of 326 (an average of over 65), which I don't think you'd ever see on Mock the Week. But then you'd have to watch for a month to see two women. It was an utterly joyous evening and one of my favourite things about my job is that I am now occasionally asked to take part in this historic programme. My only fear is that I will break it by being rubbish, but it is a robust format and can cope with me. It's a delicate balancing act of being cheeky without being rude, of joining in without saying too much, of knowing your place, but still making a contribution. Only this and Set List make me nervous and both present a similar challenge. I still have not ever achieved a full minute without interruption, but I came closer than before tonight (spoiler alert). I got some laughs though, but not as many laughs as I had listening to the others.

But as always I enjoyed the after show chat in the green room. Merton and Parsons are full of stories about comedians and panellists of the past and as a comedy fanboy I could listen to them for hours. Tonight there was chat about the goons. I didn't know that Sellers had had a heart-attack when he was about 42 and had only survived because he was in LA at the time and five miles from the only hospital in the world that could have treated him.